The present invention relates to controlling a plurality of logical resources of a storage system.
Storage systems include logical resources of a plurality of types and one of these logical resources of a plurality of types is an LU (Logical Unit) which is a logical storage device, for example. LU types include real LUs and virtual LUs, for example. Real LUs are LUs in which at least one storage space is prepared as a base among a plurality of physical storage devices provided in the storage system. A virtual LU is a virtual LU that is provided in a higher-level section of the storage system (host computer, for example). All or some of the real LUs are assigned to virtual LUs. When the storage system receives an I/O command (write command/read command) to designate a virtual LU from a higher-level section, data I/O can be executed with respect to the real LUs or some of the real LU that have been assigned to a virtual LU. As a virtual LU, an LU that has been provided by a Thin Provisioning technology, for example, in other words, an LU for which the storage capacity has been automatically expanded can be adopted. The technology related to Thin Provisioning is disclosed in Japanese Application Laid Open No. 2003-15915, for example.
Generally, so that logical resources of respective predetermined types of the storage system can be utilized in the higher-level section, the configuration of information related to the logical resources of the respective predetermined types (called ‘logical resource information configuration’ hereinbelow) must be performed manually by the administrator with respect to storage controllers for controlling the usage of logical resources. When logical resources of the predetermined types are LU, the administrator must manually input at least one of the number of LUs, the size of the LUs, which LU is assigned to which host, for example, for the configuration of LU logical resource information.
Storage system are generally installed and used in a variety of enterprises or government administration offices. In order to configure logical resource information, technical knowledge related to the storage systems is often required. For this reason, at the installation destination, the person with such knowledge is the administrator who configures the logical resource information. If the need to configure logical resource information can be eliminated as far as possible, the storage system may be considered as being easy to install and use. Depending on the installation destination of the storage system, when a person with specialized knowledge relating to the storage system is not present, that is, when a person who is able to act as administrator is not present, it may be considered desirable to eliminate the need to configure the logical resource information in such an installation destination in particular.